Sorting By Timecode vs Creation Time/Date

A little frustration I'm having.....

Media is coming in from multiple cameras with the following codecs:

AVCHD - No timecode, but FCPX sees the creation time and date and uses that for sorting.

H264 (from 5D3) after adding a reel name to the files FCPX sees the Timecode (and creation time/date) and uses it for sorting.

MXF (from Canon) FCPX sees the timecode and creation time/date and can sort.

So far, so good.

Now, because FCPX won't allow me to create optimised media from the Canon MXF I'd like to transcode it to ProRes using an external app. The problem is once I bring this ProRes footage in to FCPX it's now seeing the time/date the transcoded file was created and sorting using that (which is obviously wrong) rather than the timecode (which is being carried across with the transcode).

How can I get FCPX to sort these files in timecode / time create order nicely?

There are several hundred files, so editing the time.date by hand is cumbersome at best, and in a time sensitive edit it's just not practical.

There is no solution if you use and external application. I presume the MXF format, whichever it is, is optimized and doesn't require processing. Not sure what benefit you gain by pre-processing to ProRes.

I agree with Tom. If FCPX does not let you optimize the footage this means your system can perfectly handle the format natively. So there is no benefit in converting it to ProRes in an external application.

Well, that is certainly true for basic editing, but here's the problem.....

Canon MXF footage isn't handled properly by some features, including Optical Flow. Whenever I apply optical flow to Canon MXF footage all I ever get it duplicate frames, whereas if I transcode it I get new frames.

So, while I can edit (and colour correct etc) the MXF footage fine, I can't use some features like Optical Flow.

Yes, I've reported this to Apple a couple of times over the last year or two and nothing has changed.

You have a very good point here.

Long-gop video is indeed a lousy format for Optical Flow processing, not only in MXF format but also when rewrapped to .mov. So I agree you should have the option to convert the footage to an all I-frame format like ProRes inside FCPX, even when your system can easily handle the native codec.

While I can see the engineers thinking they are clever in deciding for us what our system can and can't play natively, I don't see what they gain by disabling the option. It's all loss and no gain from what I can see.

Besides, all my other footage plays natively too, but they let me create ProRes footage from it if I want....

There's a difference between playing natively and being in an optimized format. The MXF format you're using is in an optimized format already. AVCHD H.264 is not.

Do you really need to stabilize ever single shot with optical flow? I don't know what kind of shooting ratios you're using, but most productions the shooting ratio is at a minimum 10:1, and I've worked on projects that are more than 10 times greater over 100:1. It doesn't seem a good idea to convert material from one camera, when in all probability only a very small portion of media from that one camera is actually used in the project and also needs to be stabilized with optical flow. Even if 10% of the project needs to be stabilized it would be more practical I think to convert only what you need than everything from the camera. It may require more care at the back end, but should be quicker and use much less drive space than doing it up front.

No we don't need to stabilise or Optical Flow every shot. Far from it. But there could easily be 10-15 shots like this in a day of live events where people walk past the camera and the tripod wobbles a little etc.

Our shooting ratio is much tighter than than 10:1, more like 2:1 or less is actually imported. We do a lot of multicam work too.

Yes we can cut, export a small section as ProRes, re-import it, do what ever we need to do etc, but it all takes time, is a major PITA and of course is open to human error and worse still, breaks the editing flow.

It also means we're losing audio connectivity, timecode consistency and everything else that goes along with it. In short, I'd rather not have to do it since I don't have to do it with other formats.

I understand there is no way around it at this time, but I would have thought it's not that hard for Apple to just let me check the box, click the button and have it create me some compatible ProRes just like is does for all the other formats. I've only been asking for this since the first day I could import the footage, maybe two years ago? C'mon Apple, how hard can this be?

Tom,

It depends on what you consider to be an "optimized" format. As an example: FCPX apparently considers HDV to be an optimized format as it will not let you convert HDV to ProRes inside the app. Yet HDV is far from optimal to work with Optical Flow because it is long-gop and OF has issues with all non I-frame codecs.

You are correct when you say it would be ridiculous to convert all your footage to ProRes just for the sake of stabilizing a small number of clips. But in FCPX we can optimize individual clips from within the Event Browser. So IMO we should at least have the option to optimize any clips we want from within the Event Browser if we feel these clips should be converted to an all I-frame codec to achieve a better stabilization (and retiming) quality using Optical Flow. The choice should be made by the editor, not by the app.

I agree. Should use feedback to request this often.